


for the sane mad and the bravest monsters

by language_escapes



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees her, and his heart breaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for the sane mad and the bravest monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to uberniftacular, who listened to me whine and panic and flail while I wrote this, and then took my flimsy product and shaped it into something much better. Best person ever, and I put in my author's notes, so you can't deny it, darling!
> 
> This fic contains references to drug use, prostitution, mental illness, murder, sexual slavery, and death. None of it is graphic. If you have specific triggers and need to know more detail, contact me and I'll do my best.
> 
> The title is from Adrienne Rich and her poem "edgelit". Apparently my Elementary fics will draw extensively from that source.
> 
> I wrote most of this while very, very tipsy and generally a wreck. I apologize in advance for how it turned out.

He sees her, and his heart breaks.

It’s the reoccurring theme of his life.

******  
He visits his first prostitute when he is fourteen. He walks out of his father’s house, angry and wanting to scratch off his own skin and knowing he can’t, not unless he wants to face some rather unpleasant repercussions, not unless he wants to see Mycroft’s look of horror (and he’ll never do that to his brother, not ever, not if he can help it), and he needs something, anything- anyone. So he goes to the less reputable parts of town- the parts his father always scorns, the parts his father insists only the poor, the lazy, the worthless end up (and he has to wonder if his father mentions them to him because he can already see in his youngest child a propensity for failure, a propensity for failure that Sherlock already sees in himself), and he finds a prostitute, and he doesn’t have much, but apparently it’s enough.

Her name is Mary, and she refuses to sleep with him. “You’re a kid,” she says derisively.

“Then why did I pay you?” he demands, already angry and defensive and, yes, too young, but she took his money, and he knows what you are supposed to get from a prostitute if you pay them.

“You paid me,” Mary says sharply, “so that I can get you a goddamn room for the night, and a meal for both of us, and I won’t tell your parents you’re out here, okay kid?”

It’s a fair exchange, actually, and Holmes takes her up on it.

Later, after they’ve both eaten half of a pizza, and Holmes is lounging on the bed next to Mary watching the BBC, she hits the mute button and fixes him with a serious look.

“You ever need to see a working girl, you come find me, okay? And I suggest that you approach me with a little more respect next time, or I’ll knock your block off.”

Holmes nods quietly, less angry and more ashamed.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

Mary stares at him, and then grins, reaching over to ruffle his hair. It’s a nice smile, warm and familiar, her teeth crooked in an utterly charming way. “You get one fuck up. Next time, I tell the other girls to stay away from you, and we’ll see where that gets you.”

After that, visiting prostitutes becomes almost a weekly activity. He prefers to stay with Mary, who is sharp-tongued and sarcastic, but smiles sometimes, rolls her eyes with affection, likes to watch Doctor Who. But Mary is busy with her clients sometimes, so he meets Lily, who has two children and no babysitter, which is how Holmes winds up on her speed dial. He can’t always watch her kids- boarding schools rather frown on their students disappearing every other night- but he is always her Friday night babysitter, and Cody and Tori adore him. They watch an unfortunate number of cartoons, and they aren’t particularly interested in his logic puzzles, but then, they’re two and three.

He sees Mary most Sunday afternoons, and Lily on Fridays, and he hangs out with some of their friends during the week, dropping in on their streets or their hotel rooms. When he’s sixteen, he meets Paul.

He meets Paul through his roommate at school- or rather, he walks in on the two of them together, and Paul laughs his arse off at Holmes’s stammer and blush.

“Aren’t you the boy that the ladies talk about?” he asks afterwards, tugging a fag from his pocket. “You’re Mary and Lily’s boy, right?”

“I’m not their boy,” Holmes hisses furiously, trying to keep his voice low. There are too many other students about, and he doesn’t need them knowing that he visits prostitutes every week. They’ve already made their hatred for him clear enough, and he doesn’t want to give them a new avenue of attack.

Paul raises an eyebrow. “I think they would beg to disagree. Cigarette?” he offers, and Holmes takes it, because he hasn’t smoked before, and he’s curious. Paul coaches him through it, smiling encouragement, and even though it tastes filthy, he can’t help but grin at his accomplishment.

Paul becomes a regular Wednesday visitor. After he’s done with Holmes’s roommate, they wind up together in the library, or on the terrace, and they talk about chemistry, mostly, though sometimes physics and architecture and psychology slide into the conversation. Paul is ridiculously smart, and Holmes tries to convince him to go to University, but Paul likes his job, and that’s that.

After boarding school, after he escapes his father and finds his way into his own flat and, then, finds himself out on the streets when he cannot pay for his own flat, he spends more and more time among the working girls and boys of the city. He crashes on the sofas of the fortunate, shares park benches with the very unfortunate, hotel beds with the moderately fortunate. In time, he’s sure that every prostitute in the city knows him, and he knows them. They’re his friends. 

He loses his virginity to one of his friends; he discovers BDSM with one of his friends; he discovers coke with one of his friends. His friend Larissa is murdered, and he finds her murderer, angry and sick and shaking because not Larissa, never Larissa, she didn’t even like turning tricks that much, was just doing it until she could save enough to pay for her next semester. Not Larissa, with her ugly pixie cut and her big blue eyes. Not Larissa, with her clever fingers and her twisted smile. Not Larissa. Not her.

He finds her body in the alley with Lily. He sees her, and his heart breaks. He stumbles back and catches himself on a trash bin, tastes bile in his mouth, but he can’t throw up, not now. It would contaminate the crime scene, his brain supplies distantly. He makes himself look at her, really look. Sees her twisted form and her empty eyes, and he forces himself to look harder, and he sees things that Lily doesn’t, sobbing and dialing the police on her mobile. He walks away, and starts looking. 

He finds her murderer two days later, drags him into the police station and throws him at the nearest inspector, a ferret-faced man named Lestrade.

“This man,” he manages to choke out, “killed Larissa Young two days ago. You will find the knife in his wardrobe and her blood on the clothes in the boot of his car.” Then he leaves the station and throws up on the steps. Mary is waiting for him, and takes him home.

Two days after that, Lestrade finds him and offers to make him a consultant because of one of his friends. Holmes stands in Mary’s living room, her kitschy ceramic cats staring down at him from the shelves, her ugly sofa behind him. He stares at Lestrade, at his rodent-like eyes and nose, at the hopeful and optimistic turn of his mouth, and for a moment, Holmes lets himself want it. He lets himself remember the rush of finding the murderer, of piecing together the evidence, of putting it all together. It makes his blood hum and his skin sing, and it feels good. Then he sends Lestrade away with an ugly sneer he learned from his father and all his banker associates, and collapses to the floor.

When Mary comes home in the morning, she finds him in a drugged stupor, half on the ugly sofa and half off. She slaps his face and pours water on him and basically drags him back into soberness. When he’s slept off the worst of the drugs, he wakes to find Mary sitting next to him in jeans, a jumper, and her trainers, her left hand holding a wet rag to his forehead and her right tapping out a rhythm against her thigh.

“You stupid fuck,” she says to him as he sits up. He glares at her, but Mary glares right back, and her glares have always been more fearsome. “You stupid, selfish fuck. Getting your stupid arse fucking high in my living room- in my _house_. You stupid, stupid, selfish fuck.”

“He wanted me to become a detective or something,” Holmes says mulishly, batting her anxious hands away, because Mary sounds angry but her hands always betray her. She’s older looking now than when he was fourteen, with crow’s feet around her eyes and streaks of gray peeking out at her temples. She’s probably forty now. He’s known her ten years. The only friend he’s had for longer is Allistair. “He wanted me to- to take advantage of Larissa’s murder, wanted me to-”

“Wanted you to what, Sherlock?” Mary cries, throwing down the washrag. “Wanted you to get a real job? Because guess what, honey. We are _all_ waiting for you to do that.”

Holmes looks at her, betrayed. He pulls his knees up to his chest and then slides himself down to the floor. Mary’s sofa is too soft. The ground feels firmer beneath him. “I don’t know what I want to do yet.”

Mary looks down at him and then drops herself to the ground next to him, fixing him with a firm eye. There are only three people Holmes has ever allowed to take him to task: his mother, long dead; his brother, long estranged; and Mary.

“Do you want to turn tricks?” Mary asks him flatly.

He jerks away, startled and appalled. “No!” Then he thinks about how that came out, and shakes his head. “No,” he says again, softer now. “I don’t- sex is-”

“Blah blah blah, sex is repellent, I’ve heard your little speech, Sherlock, and you know I think it’s utter bollocks. You don’t want to turn tricks, fine, it’s not for everyone. But you know most of the prostitutes now, I think, and you know perfectly well that not everyone became a professional because they wanted it. Some people trick because it’s the only way to pay the rent, to feed themselves, and Sherlock, honey, you are well on your way. You got a drug problem-”

“It isn’t a problem,” he says insistently, but Mary rolls her eyes and keeps on.

“You sleep on our sofas, you don’t have a place of your own, and how many times have I spotted you a tenner to go get some food?”

“Not that- it’s only every now and then,” he says, but he can feel his resolve fading away.

Mary turns to face him, reaches up and puts her hands on his face, tugging until he can’t avoid looking at her. Her eyes are just as flinty as they always are, but he can spot the softness now, tucked away in the corners. “Sherlock,” she says gently. “You are a brilliant young man. You solved Larissa’s murder when you were strung out and angry and hungry, and you didn’t even have to really think about it. You were _good_ at it, and I know it hurts, to find something you’re good at at the expense of a friend, but Larissa is dead, and nothing you do can hurt her now.”

Maybe it’s the drugs or maybe it’s the exhaustion, but in either case, Holmes can’t stop himself from crying. He learned years ago to cry silently, but Mary must see the tears in his eyes. She tugs him close. He rests his head on her shoulder and lets himself mourn Larissa for the first time since he and Lily found her body in that alley. He lets himself shake with pain and terror and loss, and he feels Mary crying into his neck, equally silent.

“Larissa’s dead,” he says, closing his eyes tight. “I can’t bring her back.”

“No,” Mary says, her whisper too loud against his ear. “But you can keep going. For her. For me.”

Two days after that, Holmes goes to Lestrade and becomes a consultant for Scotland Yard, and his entire life changes.

He doesn’t have much time to spend with his friends anymore, though he still babysits Lily’s kids- babysits, though they’re teenagers now, but they like to hang out with their weird Uncle Sherlock, and he is fond of them, despite himself- and has Sunday brunch with Mary. He and Paul still discuss chemistry over Skype, Paul living in Berlin now. When he’s truly desperate to talk to someone, needs all the words built up in his mouth to have an audience, he’ll go to a friend and buy an hour or two of their time. He understands, now, how much they gave him when he was growing up. Most of them insist that he doesn’t have to pay, but he fixes them with a steely gaze that he learned from Mary and Lily and Mycroft and says, “You bought my supper every day for three weeks. I owe you.”

He buys their time like they bought his survival for far too many years, and he talks to them, and sometimes it isn’t enough, sometimes his skin feels too small for all the things inside of him, sometimes he can’t get his brain to stay silent long enough for him to sleep, sometime he feels like he’s going to fall apart, but sometimes they make it better. Sarah always has ideas, outlandish, silly ideas that make him pause and consider a less plausible answer. Jimmy makes him explain his deductions, forces him to actually articulate things he finds obvious, which is useful for when he has to go to the police and present solid evidence. Angel demands every single detail, and he loves talking to Angel, because when he tells her every detail, sometimes they don’t stick in his head while he’s trying to sleep or shower or read.

He buys their time because he’s interrupting them while they’re working and, if he’s going to get paid to consult, he may as well pay his consultants.

Years upon years later, after he’s an established consultant, after Irene has died, after he has spent six months in rehab, after he has moved, perhaps permanently, to New York City, he breaks down a door because he hears a woman’s voice, and he sees Katya.

He sees her, and his heart breaks.

Holmes remembers the name of every prostitute he ever met. He remembers their stories, their histories, their laughter and their tears. He remembers smoking weed with them, smoking fags, eating fish and chips with them, sitting in doorways together waiting for the rain to let up. He slept on their sofas, borrowed their money, stayed with their children. He teased them about their dates and their clients. He laughed at them for their fashion choices. He tried on their high heels, their dresses, and mocked them for both. They didn’t always want their life, but at least they had one.

This woman is chained to a pipe and is half naked. Her hair isn’t teased out because she thinks it’s pretty or because she thinks it frames her face well- it’s ratted from filth. She isn’t wearing leather and latex and fishnets or even torn jeans and an ugly jumper- she isn’t wearing much of anything. This woman isn’t a prostitute- she’s a slave, she’s had her life taken away from her, and Holmes wants to rip Julian Walsh’s head off.

He imagines Mary in her place, or Lily or Paul or Larissa (Larissa, Larissa, Larissa, it’s like a mantra in his head, only occasionally drowned out by the mantra Irene, Irene, Irene, and Holmes keeps a list in his head of the people he’s failed) and he wants to vomit, just like all those years ago in the alley. They had a choice- maybe not always a good one, but they had one, and Julian Walsh took that away from the woman sobbing in his arms.

Her name is Katya. She was sold by her handlers. He wants to salt and burn the earth.

When the case is solved, with Crewes still safely behind bars and Sean Figueroa heading that way, Holmes sits down in his chair and stares at the fire for a long time. The mantras in his head are clashing, and he feels like he can’t breathe. There are words building in his mouth, and he needs to say something; he misses Mary and Lily and Paul and all his other consultants, all his other friends.

He tells Watson about Irene, and that’s one mantra silenced for a moment. Larissa sings in his head, and if he closes his eyes he can just see hers, a striking blue. The blue fades to a dark brown, though, and he sees Katya, hears her sobs, and he doesn’t want another name on his list, so he pulls out his mobile and makes a call.

He makes several calls, and then he goes to see Katya in hospital.

He sits next to her bed and watches her sleep for a while. She looks better, now. Clean, at least. Better fed. She opens her eyes and he can hear the sharp intake of her breath, but he lifts his hands quickly and says, “I’m police. Police. Do you remember me?”

She stares at him, then nods slowly. “You found me. Sherlock, yes?”

He smiles a bit. “Yes. Katya, yes?”

She doesn’t smile back, but she nods, her eyes restless as they roam the room. “Yes.”

“Do you want to go back to Russia?” he asks her, feeling that he already knows the answer.

Her answer is immediate, and just as he imagined. “No,” she says sharply. “I have nothing there. I want- I do not want to go back to Russia.”

“Do you want to stay here?” he asks, and her eyes flee his, focusing down on her hands. They’re bruised and thin, and he aches to reach out and hold them, but he will not touch her. Not unless she asks. She has had far too much taken away from her, and he won’t add more to that list.

“No,” she says finally. Her voice cracks as she says it. “I came to the United States because I thought things would be better. But they weren’t.”

Tears roll down her face, but she’s silent now, none of the gasping sobs from earlier. Holmes nods. “I have a third choice, if you’d like,” he says. She looks up at him, one quick, fleeting glance, and then returns her gaze to her hands. “I have friends in England.”

Three weeks later, Holmes goes to the airport for the first time since Irene died, and watches Katya get on a plane. He waves to her, struggling not to throw up, and clutches his mobile in his hand, already hoping for the phone call from Mary saying that Katya arrived safely. Katya smiles, blows him a kiss, and disappears into the plane.

(Six and a half hours later, Mary calls and says Katya is fine. Holmes talks with her for twenty minutes then hangs up, goes to the lavatory, and throws up.)

(Watson presses a wet rag to the back of his neck and doesn’t ask why he’s shaking.)

*************  
This is the story of Irene:

He sees her, and his heart breaks.

She is tall, for a woman, and she’s laughing, and her head is thrown back, and she’s quite possibly the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, and he’ll never, ever be the one to make her laugh like that, he knows it already, because he’s never been the one to make people laugh (unless they are laughing at him, but he doesn’t count that, because there is no joy in being the subject of derision, the subject of ridicule and contempt, and he has been that all his life, he would know), he’s never been the one to make people relax and feel alive and open and free like that.

She’s a photograph, and his client is a politician who looks and moves just like his father. “I want you to find her,” he says, and Holmes looks up at him. The politician can’t stand being in this room with him, he can see it. His flat is dingy, and small, and there are stains on the carpet that would make any sane man flinch (but then, Holmes hasn’t claimed to be sane in a long time), and Holmes can see the judgment in his eyes, that eternal look of _I’m better than you; I’m better than this_. 

He hates that look.

“Her name?” he asks, handing the photograph back. He doesn’t need it to find her. He’s already memorized her features: her dark skin, her freckles, the tendons in her neck. The curling tattoo on her wrist, her graceless abandon in that moment of merriment, caught on film and frozen. 

“Irene,” the politician says. “She has some…”

“Compromising photos or letters,” he says, already bored, but he needs this. He can’t afford his flat anymore, can’t afford food, needs the work, needs the pay, needs the case. Needs something to occupy his mind, even if it is dull.

“Photos, in this case,” the politician says stiffly, and Holmes allows himself a moment to indulge in his hatred for this man and all he represents. The suit and the stiffness, the artful sneer, clearly practiced and perfected over the years. He makes Holmes’s skin crawl. He will find her, but not for him.

He finds her, but not until she’s left the country, her laugh echoing in his ears. He never gets the photos, though the politician pays him anyway for scaring her out of the country. That isn’t the truth. The truth is that she knew he was coming and laid so many traps in his way that he never had a chance to reach her. The truth is that she saw through him the instant she laid eyes on him. Holmes never stood a chance against her. He laments it, really. He would have liked to speak with her, know her. He has always loved extraordinary women.

To his astonishment, she writes him, nearly six months later, and they strike up a hardy correspondence. Her name is Irene Adler, and she’s brilliant. In a different way than he, perhaps, but in a better way, maybe. In a way that won’t end in heartbreak and tears. 

They write about silly, inconsequential things, and they pass each other riddles and codes. She’s a singer, and he plays violin, and they talk incessantly about music. They write music in their letters, inked notes on the edges of the page. He tells her about his cases; she tells him about her career. Sometimes she mentions her husband, Godfrey (he goes by his middle name, Allen), and Holmes laughs at her stories about his inability to wake up on time in the morning (“he hates his job, Sherlock, so I can’t blame him for sleeping through all three of his alarms”) or how their dog drags him out even in the pouring rain (“I really don’t know why we decided on a Great Dane, Allen is such a small man, it’s hysterical, really”). 

He tells her about his childhood, all the unpleasant details, and admits that sometimes he forgets the good moments, the laughter and the smiles and the joy, because he can’t see it past the unhappiness. She tells him about the politician, about how she knew it wasn’t forever but wanted to believe it, at least for a while. She sends him packages of silly toys, things she finds in dollar stores and second-hand shops. They’re cheap and easily broken, but the sentiment is long lasting. He likes to send her things only found in England, certain brands of tea or biscuits, pictures of Trafalgar Square and pigeon feathers and a vial of vile Thames water.

Irene’s handwriting is large and swoops while his is tiny and cramped. She doodles in the margins, when she isn’t writing music, funny cartoons and caricatures of the people she works with. At one point, he receives a letter that is an entire cartoon of her defeating him, and he laughs so hard that tears come out of his eyes. He sends her back a poor sketch of him swooping in on a vine to save her life, and receives a one page letter that simply says ‘You Wish’ on it in her audacious handwriting. She dots her I’s with hearts and smiley faces. She laughs at him constantly.

He’s never met Allen, and he’s only seen Irene while in disguise, never as himself, or when she was in disguise, tricking him and making her escape, laughing all the while, but she’s his closest friend, his only confidante. They talk sometimes about Holmes flying over to New York City, maybe watching her perform, but he never does. They talk about Irene flying to London, sleeping on his sofa and mocking him while he makes a mess of his cases, but she never does. They stick with letters, hilarious, insightful, witty letters. She makes him feel like he’s soaring, like he can fly, like he’s just as brilliant as he always claims to be, like nothing on this Earth can touch him.

And then she dies.

She dies in a plane crash on her way to London, a surprise for his birthday, and Holmes never flies again, unless it’s with a needle in his arm.

******  
He sees her, and his heart breaks.

She’s closed off, and so sad behind her eyes. He can see it instantly, the same way he can see his own sadness when he looks in a mirror—

His first week at Hemdale, breaking all the mirrors, so sickened, so angry at what he saw, so much sadness that he would never, ever rid himself of—

It’s like looking at his own reflection, and it hurts.

Ms. Watson hurts.

He sees her, his heart breaks, and he says, “Do you believe in love at first sight?” and it is simultaneously the truest thing he has ever said while being a lie. He may be repeating a line off a television show, but Holmes has spent over thirty years learning himself, and if there is one thing he can say, but will never ever say, it’s this: he falls a little bit in love with everyone he meets.

He falls a little bit in love, and he falls a little bit in hate, because when he looks at a person he can see the best of them (they give to the homeless in the street without thought; they keep random bits of food in their pockets for stray animals; they call their mother everyday even though the woman’s mind has been subsumed by Alzheimer’s) and the worst (they keyed a random car because they were frustrated and it was in the way; they dropped their trash on the ground, thought about it, then left it; they purposely let their boss think their coworker screwed up the finances) and he cannot help but love and loathe them in equal measure.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asks, and he loves her instantly, as he does everyone else, and he hates her, as he does everyone else, but-

But for the sadness in her eyes that mirrors his own.

If she had come in and been like any of the people at Hemdale, if she walked in after he said good-bye to Christy and looked at him with thinly veiled contempt and pity, he would have had no trouble sending her away after six weeks. He wouldn’t have minded lying and scamming his way through six weeks just like he lied and scammed his way through six months at Hemdale.

But Watson is different, in the way that all the important people in his life are. Mycroft is different from his father ( _was_ , was different, he doesn’t like to examine what Mycroft has become, just another politician with a smirk and a sneer), and so he clung. Mary and Lily and Paul were different because they always told him the truth and forced him to be more than he ever thought possible. Irene was different- Irene was different.

Watson is different because she reminds him of all the best people in his life. She laughs at him and works with him, just like Irene. She pushes him to be more, like Mary, Lily, and Paul. She takes care of him, like Mycroft.

He never thought it possible to find the best of all worlds in just one person.

Holmes has long accepted that he will never be happy. He has moments where he comes close, when his brain is spinning theories and everything is moving too fast and he feels like he could conquer the world, but years of learning himself and six months of rehab have very much told him that that isn’t happiness; that’s mania, and it’s close, but it isn’t quite right. When he isn’t shaking with energy and too many emotions poking through his skin like bee stings from within, he can’t find it in himself to leave his bed, sick with pain and unhappiness. He’s accepted this in himself: he will never be happy, and his brain will never work right.

But he cannot accept the same in Watson. He doesn’t want to add her name to the litany, to the mantra, to that never ending refrain that reminds him how he’s failed. If he can- if he can help just one more person, just one more, maybe his failures will be forgiven. Maybe the fact that he lost his entire life with one horrible, terrible mistake can be redeemed. He doesn’t ask to be happy anymore, he knows that isn’t for him. But perhaps he can make her smile. Perhaps he can make her laugh. Maybe- maybe he can take away the sadness in her eyes that rivals his own.

So even as he rebuilds his own life as best he can, he takes on the task of bringing joy back to Watson.

Oh, he’s awful at it- no matter how much he wants to make her happy, he cannot stop being himself, and she pushes where he does not need her, and she pries where she is not wanted. He knows that he exasperates her, frustrates her, makes her genuinely furious sometimes. But in those moments, there is no lingering unhappiness. There isn’t a veneer of professionalism. He’ll take his small victories.

He invites her to his work, and she takes to it beautifully. It surprises him, actually. Even Irene had very little interest in his work- she found it intellectually interesting, but it didn’t consume her, not the way it does Watson. Watson cares about the survivors, loves justice as fervently as he does, and perhaps she doesn’t- she doesn’t make herself sick over the horror and injustice in the world, but she certainly feels it and hates it and wants to fight against it.

She was probably a remarkable surgeon. He cannot help but lament that he never knew her when she still practiced. 

Then she finds out about Irene, and his love and admiration for her turns to solid contempt and self-loathing. She does not need to know. She doesn’t ever, ever need to know, but she wants to know, and he recognizes curiosity, of course he does. He and Watson are terrifyingly similar. She wants to know, and he does not blame her, even as he hates her for it.

Larissa. Irene. Katya.

Larissa, Irene, Katya.

Larissa Irene Katya LarissaIreneKatya larissairenekatyalarissairenekatyalarissairenekatya-

Enough.

He stares at the fire, and Watson says good night.

“She died,” he says, and it isn’t enough, but it’s all he can offer for now. Irene died, and it was his fault. Larissa died, and it wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t save her. He could only avenge her, and vengeance is never enough, it’s just a pale shadow, a frightening shade in the place of the person you loved. He will help Katya, and he will never forget her, never forget the bruises along her wrists and ankles and on the inside of her thighs, but she will not become a spectre that haunts him.

“She died,” he says, because Watson is pulling away, and he can’t stand it.

“I did not take her passing well,” he tells her, and that’s true, he isn’t lying, but he wants Watson to hear all the words that are stuck in his mouth, unable to escape, unsafe in this room. I did not take it well. If you leave, I will not take it well. Please.

Please.

He says good night, and Watson leaves, but something has settled again. She smiles at him in the morning, makes coffee and forces him to get off the sofa and come get it. She forces him into trainers and makes him jog with her (and honestly, he doesn’t understand why she likes jogging, she isn’t going anywhere, she isn’t actually running away from anything because she’s just going to come home, and Holmes understands the need to run, but he doesn’t understand pointless running) and she drags him to another tedious addict meeting where she sits passively and calmly with a thumbtack in her fingers. He watches her out of the corner of his eye while they’re at the diner, her eating a salad, him picking away at truly deplorable fish and chips (Americans can’t quite replicate the London variety). She looks… if not happy, perhaps not unhappy, either.

She’s less guarded than three weeks ago, at the very least.

“I met her on a case,” he says suddenly. He had no intention of saying it. He isn’t ready to tell Watson about Irene. He isn’t ready to tell anyone about Irene, because how can he explain how utterly he loved her without them misunderstanding? How can he explain that for almost a year he was wonderfully, truly happy? That there were no caveats, no footnotes, no addendums to being happy- but that he simply _was_. He was happy, and she made him happy. She made him laugh, and he can’t remember the last time he laughed in any way that wasn’t bitter and desperately, desperately sad.

How does he explain that for almost an entire year, he managed to outrun himself?

When looks up, Watson has her fork comically poised halfway to her mouth, which is closed, at least. Her eyes are steady and warm, and though the monster of sadness lurks there, he mostly sees a terrible curiosity, and a fierce kindness.

He doesn’t know what else to say, and he can feel his mouth working impotently, the words building but refusing to come, as they always do. Watson sets her fork down and carefully dabs her lips with her napkins and then, sharply, smirks. Not the smirk of his father, the banker, or his brother, the politician, but the smirk of Mary and Lily and Paul. Friendship and kindness and no hidden agendas. “Gee, why does that not surprise me?” she says, rolling her eyes.

He’s startled into laughing, a hoarse sound, long rusted. “To be fair, I don’t meet all my friends on a case.”

“No, no, you meet them when you write and tell them they’re not an awful actor, or when they listen to you lecture at Scotland Yard, or when they are assigned to you by your father,” Watson says, the smirk only widening.

Holmes smirks back. “I never said I did things the conventional way. If anything, Watson, I should think you know that about me, at the very least.”

Watson takes another bite of her salad, the romaine crunching delicately. She spears a baby tomato, lifts it, and looks back at him. “Do you want to tell me anything else about her?”

He pushes his fish around his plate, swallows thickly. He thinks about Irene, and he can still hear her laughter as she walked down the street, her hair in cornrows, her trousers baggy, a hoodie obscuring the shape of her, hiding her tattoo, the tendons in her neck. He can still hear the tinny sound coming out of the headphones in her ears, a pounding sound that, in time, he would come to know as her own rhymes. He can still see the wide smile.

But it was her laugh, really, that made her extraordinary.

“Not yet,” he says, and crosses his legs. His mobile vibrates in his pocket, and he digs for it. He glances at the text. It’s from Gregson; they’re needed. He puts it back in his pocket and takes a deep breath. Then he looks at Watson, offering her perhaps the most honest smile he has to give, only fifty percent fake, the other fifty percent genuine and heartfelt and full of all the things he cannot say. “But maybe someday.” Then he tells her about the text, a double homicide, a couple in the park hung with extension cords. He sees the spark in her eyes and thinks that maybe, just maybe, he won’t fail her.

Holmes can’t stop his brain, as much as he’d like to try. He will never be happy, not the way that everyone else seems to be, in a way that is effortless for them and ephemeral and fleeting for him. He will never, ever be enough for the people he failed, and their names are permanently seared on his skull. But he can bring puzzles to Watson, present them to her like a dog brings dead birds to their master, and he can take away the unhappiness that lurks within her. He can refuse to add her name to his list of failures.

He can make her smile.

He can make her laugh.

He’d rather like to hear her laugh. He suspects it’s a lovely, gossamer thing.

“Come along, then, Watson,” he says, tossing his napkin on the plate and standing, his skin already feeling tight with a need to move. “The game is afoot!”

“Oh, Jesus,” Watson mutters, but he can see the smile she tries to hide.

It’s a start, and that is enough.


End file.
